By The Numbers

Friday, September 28, 2012

Well, we survived summer and the start of school.With the new school year comes many changes
here in Greenwich.We have a new Superintendent
and a new Math Coordinator.I have had
the pleasure of meeting both of them, and I am very encouraged by their outlook
and openness.They have started the preliminary steps toward
the math curriculum review, which will begin in earnest with the publication of
the Math Monitoring Report at the beginning of November.The new format for monitoring reports
established by the Board of Education last school year should provide an
excellent foundation and starting point for the review.

Will Everyday Math figure in the equation for the review?EDM is very different in structure from the Common
Core Standards (e.g., spiraling versus teaching to mastery).For EDM to claim alignment to the Common Core
will require a major shift in their philosophy, or a great sales job.But hey, didn’t that get us to where we are
now?Let’s hope we don’t repeat history
(I thought we were talking about math, Brian).Beware of salesmen bearing books!

Even if we dump EDM next year, we still have to worry
about the “lost generation” of students who learned (and I use that word loosely)
their elementary school math using that program.Many teachers recognized the failings of EDM
and heavily supplemented the program to try to teach the basics.But not all teachers had the background or
experience to supplement.By the time we
get rid of EDM, there will be five or six classes which received the majority
of their math education in elementary school under Everyday Math.What are we going to do to ensure that these
students know the basics?I’ve heard two
stories of honors students (advanced math students) who got to high school,
then had to ask their parents how to do long division.Ask a middle school math teacher (off the record,
if they will comment) what their take is on how well prepared the students
are.

Speaking of the Common Core, there has been much debate
about the Common Core State Standards, with several states questioning their
involvement.The Standards were judged (at
least in one review) to be better than most of the individual state standards,
so only a few states (not Connecticut) would have a argument with the Standards
based on quality.The main reasons for a
second look are (1) concerns about giving up local control for a “national“ standard,
and (2) cost.Most states jumped to the
CCSS to provide a path away from the requirements of No Child Left Behind.This was sort of a Catch 22.Avoid NCLB by signing up for another
centralized set of requirements.Either
way, the national government is increasing its involvement in what is,
constitutionally, a state and local purview.

Apparently most states also jumped before they understood
the cost to implement the Common Core.The
publishers and the test makers are so very happy.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

The link below takes you to a press release dealing with a research article discussing the relationship between “Math Success” and knowledge of fractions and long division.As you might guess, there is a strong relationship.I am trying to find a copy of the full article so that I can provide you with better information.

Remember previous postings highlighting ability with fractions and decimal division (long division).Remember the common complaints (there are so many, of course they are common) about Everyday Mathematics lack of focus on these areas.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

I don’t necessarily want to get off the math track (sorry, tracking is a bad word) here, but an article in the NY Times on Monday makes me wonder what we are missing on the other side of the three R’s (writing and reading).

The article talks about the changes made to the scoring of the writing portion of the Florida Comprehensive Achievement Test when the scores plummeted from last year.Only 27% of fourth graders were proficient, down from 81% the previous year.According to the article “The numbers fell so drastically because, as announced last summer, state officials toughened the standards, paying more attention to grammar and spelling as well as to the factual accuracy of supporting details.”

I may be old fashioned, but isn’t “paying attention” another phrase for actually grading the test properly?How can you judge proficiency when you are discounting grammar and spelling, as appears was done under the old standards?

The rest of the article is interesting, especially the solution to the reduced number if students reaching proficiency.

Monday, June 4, 2012

I spoke at the Board of Education meeting on 24 May to urge the administration to start the Math Curriculum review before November, which is the date for the delivery of the next Math Monitoring Report. The curriculum review policy is being discussed now in committee, and as written, would rely on the Monitoring Report to kick off the process.

_______________________________________________________________________First, congratulations to the high school and middle school Math teams for their first place finishes in Connecticut competitions.

Thank you for your recent actions regarding the
acceleration of a math curriculum review.This is a great first step.

Recognizing the impact of the proposed revisions to
Policy E001, I would like to make a case for the initiation of this review
prior to the delivery of the next Math Monitoring Report scheduled for November
2012.The reasoning for this is simple
timing.If that report triggers the
start of the 12-18 month cycle for the review, the earliest implementation
would be September 2014, which is the start of the school year with the new
standardized testing.

Initiation now, or more realistically as soon as a new
Math Coordinator is appointed, still provides the opportunity to conduct a
thorough review and to have time for professional development prior to the
start of the 2013-14 school year. The
budget cycle would allow for this timing.I recognize the unsettled nature
of some of the programs being offered for sale as Common Core compliant.However, investigating the experiences of
other districts which have already made moves to new curricula should provide
the required information to select an appropriate, Common Core aligned,
program.

The data contained in the January 2012 Math Monitoring
Report can be augmented with the additional required elements as they become
available.Waiting until November would delay
implementation a full year.It would
extend the use of Everyday Math one more year, and would also cause us to spend
resources developing and implementing a transition plan with Everyday Math as
its basis.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

During the follow up discussion regarding the Proposed
Technology Plan 2012-2015, Board of Education member Jennifer Dayton posed a
very searching and profound question: What can technology do to bring about an
extraordinary rise in student achievement?

The response was minimal, but this question should form the
basis for any investment in technology going forward.

Are we investing for the sake of making some
investment?Or to have the "best stuff" in
our schools?The bottom line is
results.Are we raising student
achievement significantly with our spending?

At the recent Board of Education meeting, there was a discussion regarding homework policy, as part of the larger discussion around the monitoring report for Effective Learning Environment (E040).The topic had been raised before, seemingly in the context of ensuring the consistency of the application of the homework policy across the district.See specifically pages 6-7 and pages 12-13.

Pages 12-13 deal with the “Prior Years” management issue around homework, specifically, "the District will be examining research on homework and its relationship to student achievement."The monitoring report references a book (Visible Learning) which brings together 800 studies around student achievement.I reproduce the summary contained in the monitoring report below.I have not read the book (it is not in the Greenwich Library collection).

The recommendation is that the district form a committee of teachers, parents and administrators to explore the homework issue.From my reading, the research indicates support for less/no homework at the elementary school level, based on the lack of a significant impact on achievement.

One comment from a Board member was that parents use homework as a means to understand what is going on.This may indicate a lack of communication, or a lack of informative reports cards (there's a surprise), or both.

Personal note: looking back, I don't recall having any significant or regular homework until seventh grade.I still remember the excitement when we got our first homework assignments.Boy, did that end quickly.

This begs the question, in relation to learning such things as basic math facts: If the current direction is that math facts are to be practiced at home, what would happen if there was no more homework?Would that drilling return to the schools/teachers?Would it fall by the side of the road completely?Perhaps ending the ridiculous Everyday Math homework and letting parents drill their kids in the math facts in the time saved would be an effective answer (and one which appears to be supported by the research - see the seventh bullet point regarding "Effects are highest....").But what about the parents who are working, or don't get the importance?Will the achievement gap widen?Tough questions.

____________________________________________________________

Highlights of Research on Homework

Educational researcher John Hattie spent fifteen years reviewing thousands of studies involving millions of students and teachers on the impact of different influences on student achievement. His findings are summarized in the book Visible Learning: A Synthesis of over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement. Effect sizes standardize changes in student achievement allowing us to compare the impact of different factors (an effect size of 1.0 equals one standard deviation). The typical effect size across all the studies Hattie reviewed is d =.40, and the author proposes that this is the level where a strategy or practice begins to noticeably impact student achievement. In Hattie’s words, "The effect size of 0.40 sets a level where the effects of innovation enhance achievement in such a way that we can notice real-world differences and this should be the benchmark of such real-world change."(p. 17) The list below presents highlights from Hattie’s meta-analyses on homework.

• The correlation between time spent on homework and achievement is near zero for elementary students.

• Greater effects for older students vs. younger students.

• Effects of homework are twice as large for high school students as for middle school students. Effects are twice as large for middle school students as for elementary school students.

Monday, May 21, 2012

I was hoping the school district would have posted the
video of the Thursday evening Working Session by now, so that I could provide
exact quotes.Since this is good news
though, I don’t want to wait any longer, and will rely on my notes to present
the sense of the discussion.

The Board of Education has instructed the administration to scope out the work required to conduct a mathematics curriculum review!

Chairman Leslie Moriarty introduced the topic (as a
result of an added item on the agenda) by saying she was interested in
obtaining a Board consensus on how to move forward with the transition to
Common Core Standards for math.

Peter von Braun immediately answered that we should be
doing a “full bore” review.

Barbara O’Neill indicated that it would be “short sighted”
to focus on Common Core, and that we should be doing a full review.

Jennifer Dayton said that given the date of the last
review, a full review was needed.

Chairman Moriarty pointed out that there were competing
priorities, and that the budget process needed to be considered.

Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum, Instruction and
Professional Learning Stacey Gross said that the current plan was to work this
summer to start the transition by developing augmented materials and enabling
professional learning, with a focus on the elementary level.She continued that the next Math Monitoring
Report was due in November.She
indicated that the curriculum review schedule was “very flexible” and that
currently the Science implementation was on track for 2012-13 (first year), the
Social Studies review was being expanded, and the English/Language Arts review
(scheduled to start next fall I believe) could push out.

Dr. Lulow indicated that his interest in this topic
(i.e., he asked for the agenda item) was a result of wanting to know where the
new Math Coordinator (to be hired) should focus.He asked if we should expedite the math
curriculum review, and if so, he would take that into account in the
coordinator selection.

Peter Sherr asked whether the introduction of the new
testing for the Common Core Standards in 2014-15 school year meant that we should
be implementing changes in the math curriculum in the 2013-14 school year.He went on to refer to a Wall Street Journal
article questioning whether the Common Core Standards were really an
improvement.In any case, he indicated
that he supported a “deeper, sooner, more complete” review.

Jennifer Dayton said that we could move forward with a
curriculum review, irrespective of the timing of the implementation, and that
she was supportive of a start to the review sooner, picking up on Peter Sherr’s
phrase.

Adriana Ospina, referring back to the presentation made
by the current Math Coordinator at the 4 April 2012 Work Session, indicated
that she supported option #3, which would entail a full curriculum review.She specifically mentioned Everyday Math (and
not in a complementary way).

Seeing that at least five of the Board members were in
favor of accelerating the review, Chairman Moriarty summarized by saying this
would not be a small change, and then asked the administration to give an
indication of the scope of work for a curriculum review.

Barbara O’Neill mentioned that the first step would be
the Math Monitoring Report, scheduled for November (see my comments below).Peter Sherr asked if we could get outside
help for the review, to which Dr. Lulow responded that it was not unprecedented.

I may have missed some of the nuances being expressed
(and apologies for misquotes), but the general feeling appeared to me that the
review should be a full review and that it should start sooner rather than
later.The tone I sensed was concern
that the proposals (options #1 or #2 from the previous Work Session) for transitioning
to the Common Core using Everyday Math as a foundation was not going to produce
the improvements in performance desired.

Barbara O’Neill’s comment that the first step would be
the Math Monitoring Report (“MMR”) is correct, given the policy for such
reviews (the policy is currently under
revision).But let’s look at the timing
that this would impose.If the MMR is
published and accepted in November 2012, starting the review, the 12-18 months
stipulated as a maximum time frame would put the first possible implementation in
September 2014, at the beginning of the school year leading up to the first
testing under the Common Core Standards. A twelve month review would allow 9-10
months for preparation and professional learning, but the start would still be September
2014.This path would also require
spending resources (time and money) on planning and executing a transition
program, as it would be unwise to put all the marbles into a big bang implementation.

If the Board decides that this is not a feasible path,
the immediate start of a review (as soon as the new Math Coordinator is named
or hired) would allow a 12 month (preferably shorter) review, with the
remaining months (June-August 2013) for professional learning prior to a September
2013 implementation.This implementation
could be limited to grades 2-5, giving all grades almost two years of the new
curriculum prior to the first test in May 2015.

Needless to say, I am a huge supporter of an expedited
review.While it would be too late to
provide a better curriculum for our daughter, the benefit to younger students
needs to considered.Even one year less
of Everyday Math would be a tremendous improvement!

If you recognize the issues with Everyday Math, how do you fix them?

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About Me

I am a three year resident of Riverside, having moved with my family from Briarcliff Manor in Westchester in 2008. I have always loved mathematics. I left high school after my junior year to attend college, having completed AP Calculus (only advanced math course available). I graduated from the U. of Akron (OH) with a BS in Chemical Engineering and an MS in Polymer Science. After working as a Research Engineer, I received my MBA from Columbia, with a concentration in Operations Management and Business Economics. I worked for Credit Suisse (First Boston) for 25 years, in the Treasury and Operations Departments, retiring in 2010 as a Managing Director.
I believe even an engineer should be able to write a clear sentence as well as do the math, but it is the math that makes you an engineer.